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Inequalities in IT Co-op Programs
Women with high GPAs at school find it difficult to assert their position at the top of the class when it comes to co-op applications, due to the Freedom of Information Act that forbids the release of transcripts to employers. While the internship and co-op pipeline into a company can be one solution to getting more women into the IT industry, it is still not meritocratic. *The Freedom of Information Act makes it easier for male students to lie about their GPA to get ahead, since they do not receive the same sort of scrutiny and suspicion women get when they try to enter the field. *Even if the woman voluntarily provides her transcript to employers, this only proves her high academic standing and not relative high academic standing if other students lie about their GPAs and are not asked to present proof of it. The experience is similar to getting nerfed in a MMORG. Male programmer privilege, in contrast, is a buff. *This issue typically gets ignored or unexamined due to the reputation of IT being a pure meritocracy. *The job placement process, while excluding objective GPA information, will often include letters of reference or recommendation, which have been shown to contain gender biases. This removes agency from individual women and places more power in authority figures that communicate with each other in the absence of the applicant. *When the issue is brought up by a woman, she can be treated by the co-op department as though she were the one considering cheating, when she is in fact the one with the high GPA that is concerned about others cheating. This is a similar pattern of behaviour to "You're the sexist". It may also be more nefarious because it also carries the assumption that the woman had a low GPA (Condescension) and was therefore motivated to cheat. *The problem can be addressed with a response of, "But there is no proof others cheat," or "I didn't see it happen," (similar reaction to the Male experience trump card). However, the college or university can easily compare student transcripts with the data students enter into the college co-op system, and thus verify if they really wanted to. *Without access to grades, the most that potential employers know about students is that they met the co-op cut-off average and that they are enrolled full-time. Most students also have limited work experience relevant to the field. This places a high emphasis and importance on the interview process, where women are at a disadvantage to men, and where evaluation methods and practices can be very inconsistently applied. Many issues identified on the Male Programmer Privilege Checklist can be brought into action at this step in the process. *Inability to leverage proof of a high academic standing (if students lie about theirs and erode her advantage) robs a woman of something she could have been able to use to counter the stereotype threat. *This bug in the system is one hard structural problem to fix due to legal and privacy issues. (The ombudsman told this Wiki editor that a systemic problem against women exists but he can't do anything about it. However, if another university/college comes up with a brilliant, innovation solution to this problem, others adopt it, and it becomes the norm, he would work to have his own academic institution join the bandwagon. This simultaneously says something about a willingness to act but also a reluctance to). *The burden is for women to correct the inequality, while simultaneously maintaining high academic standing, since the administration seems resistent to change. This takes time and resources and is culturally seen as a form of protest rather than celebrated as an extracurricular activity to put on a resume. ("Hi there, my hobby was fighting sexism so you would hire me.") The activity is also not seen as geeky enough, despite the fact that identifying holes in the meritocracy myth is an intellectual exercise. *Co-op placements are also not guaranteed, and college/universities let students know this and take no responsibility. It is entirely possible for a female student with a 3.90 GPA to lose a job to a 2.80 GPA male student and not gain employment during tough economic times when co-op placements are scarcer. The band-aid solution offered to students in the face of scarcity is to network, which is also problematic for women in IT, especially when co-op departments advise networking with other students (ie. the competition). *The co-op phenomenon could also be considered a Glass Door to female students, which is ironic since its purpose was intended to give students a way into a company. Unless this problem is addressed, co-op programs can serve to be merely a carrot on the end of a stick to increase female enrollment at academic institutions. This makes the numbers look good on promotional materials, while simultaneously not following through on the end result of equality in the workplace. *The co-op phenonemon has parallels to the Glass Cliff for academically high-achieving women (not giving her enough resources to succeed and placing her in a precarious situation). Due to the privacy law, colleges/universities must withhold evidence of a woman's high relative academic standing and place all responsibility on her alone when it comes to combating sexism at the interview process.